Some background knowledge on Ethics. I found this infomration helpful for understanding the ideas of Kant.

Max Weber's "Wertfreiheitstheorem"

Weber suggested that we should use our personal values when we act as private citizens. In science, however, when we have to discard our values when we test theories empirically.

Is this feasible?

Kant, Immanuel on the Categorial Imperativ (Encyclopedia:Grolier)

{kahnt, i-mahn'-oo-el}

"A pivotal force in the history of philosophy, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, b. Apr. 22, 1724, d. Feb. 12, 1804, radically altered the nature of philosophic inquiry. Kant was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia, to lower-middle-class parents who were devout pietists (see PIETISM). At the age of 8 he entered the Collegium Fridiricianum, a pietistic Latin school; he remained there for 8 1/2 years and then entered the University of Konigsberg in 1740 to study theology and, subsequently, natural science and philosophy. While at the university he was greatly influenced by a follower of Christian Wolff, the German rationalist. He also read the works of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Isaac Newton. Other important influences on Kant's later thought were the writings of David Hume and Jean Jacques Rousseau. The death of his father forced him to interrupt his studies, and he became a tutor for private families from 1746 to 1755. In 1755 he returned to the University of Konigsberg, where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1756 he was granted a degree and made a lecturer, and in 1770 he was appointed a professor.

Pre-Critical Period (1755-81)

By 1755, Kant had written Principiorum Primorum Cognitiones Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidato (The First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge), which was somewhat critical of the Leibnizian philosophy, and The General Natural History of the Heavens (Eng. trans., 1900), in which he employed Newtonian laws to formulate the Kant-LaPlace hypothesis of the origin of the solar system. In this period his works were primarily scientific, but some contained discussions of methodology. For example, in 1756 he published Physical Monadology (Eng. trans., 1928), which contrasted Leibnizian with Newtonian ways of thinking and introduced the distinction between things-in-themselves and things-as-they-appear.

In his writings during the 1760s he was explicitly critical of the Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy. In 1763, in An Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Eng. trans., 1911), he argued that some physical relations, such as causality, cannot be reduced to logical relations, and in Enquiry into the Proofs for the Existence of God (1763; Eng. trans., 1836), he rejected Rene Descartes's attempt to prove existence by logic. In Inquiry into the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals (1764; Eng. trans., 1949), he directly attacked the Leibnizian methodology of modeling philosophy solely on the deductive method. Kant's inaugural dissertation, The Forms and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible Worlds (1770; Eng. trans., 1928), marked a complete breach with the Leibnizian metaphysics.

Critical Period (1781-90)

Between 1770 and 1781, Kant published very little. Between 1781 and 1790, however, he produced his most important works, representing the full development of his critical powers. In 1781 he published the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON (Eng. trans., 1838), his most famous work. It is divided into two major parts: "The Transcendental Doctrine of the Elements," which deals with the sources of human knowledge, and the "Transcendental Doctrine of Method," which deals with the proper and improper uses of reason. Kant used the word transcendental to designate that method which examines the necessary but nonempirical conditions of knowledge. In 1785 he published The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (Eng. trans., 1969) and, in 1787, The Critique of Practical Reason (Eng. trans., 1949), both of which examine moral philosophy. The third critique, The Critique of Judgment (1790; Eng. trans., 1895), deals with aesthetic and teleologic, or purposive, judgments. During this period Kant also published seven other major works.

Philosophy

From Kant's point of view, the philosophical traditions of both EMPIRICISM and RATIONALISM had reached a "dark, confused, and useless" dead end. What he proposed was a radical, new synthesis in which he would incorporate both experience and reason without falling into the skepticism of the empirical school or the vast, unverifiable metaphysical structure of the rationalist school. The problem of knowledge, as he saw it, was how to connect the "is" of sense experience with the "must" of necessary and universal truth. His starting point was the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. An analytic judgment is one in which the predicate is contained in the subject--for instance, "Triangles have three sides." The truth of such a judgment can be known by an analysis of the subject. A synthetic judgment is one in which the predicate adds to or expands the subject--for instance, "Triangles were the earliest figures to be discovered in geometry." The truth of such a statement cannot be known through an analysis of the subject.

Kant also distinguished two ways in which judgments can be known: something is known a priori if it is neither derived from nor testable by sense experience; it is known a posteriori if it is derived from or testable by experience. Philosophers before Kant had held that analytic judgments were known a priori and that synthetic judgments were known a posteriori. Analytic a priori judgments were always and necessarily true--but true only about the meaning and relations of words, not about the world. Synthetic a posteriori judgments, on the other hand, were about the world--but they could only be contingent or probable truths. This meant that we could have no certain knowledge about experience, and Kant believed that we had such knowledge. Thus he formulated this problem: "How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" His solution, in essence, was that experience provides the content (the synthetic element) and the mind provides the structure (the a priori element) that determines the way in which the content will be organized and understood.

Kant calls the contribution of the mind a "category." He distinguishes four groups of categories by which the contents of experience are ordered: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Examples of specific categories within these groups are space, time, causality, and substance. These categories are contentless and only prescribe the structure for objects of possible experience. Space, for example, is not something external to us but a structure in the mind that relates objects to one another. The active contribution of the mind gives meaning to the external material of experience. Whether things really are the way they appear to us is something we can never know, for all our knowledge comes prestructured through the filter of the mind. This is the basis for Kant's famous distinction between the unknowable NOUMENON, or thing-in-itself, and the PHENOMENON, or thing-as-it-appears.

Kant held that synthetic a priori judgments were possible in mathematics and physics but not in metaphysics. Thus he thought it a mistake for metaphysicians to attempt to go beyond sense experience in order to define concepts like God, freedom, or the immortal soul. All theoretical knowledge consists in applying the categories to perceptual material located in space and time, and these concepts lie outside the spatiotemporal categories. Such ideas have, for Kant, an indispensable function. Whereas most concepts have a "constitutive" function (they classify experience), concepts like God, freedom, or soul have a "regulative" function: they guide us toward certain goals useful for science and ethics. They are held "as if" they were true.

In the moral sphere Kant says that he has denied knowledge to make room for faith. Because moral law cannot be justified by reason it can only be obeyed for its own sake. Kant's ethical theory thus rests on the concept of duty. A good person acts out of duty, not because he or she fears punishment or hopes for reward or happiness, but only because it is his or her duty. Like other concepts, moral laws are only mental structures, so the primary moral law will be a contentless form of judgment that can be applied universally; Kant calls this the CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE. The categorical imperative states that a person should "act in such a way that it is possible for one to will that the maxim of one's action should become a universal law." Kant gives the example of someone who borrows money, promises to repay it, but has no intention of doing so. If this were a universal law--that is, if everyone behaved this way--promises would be meaningless, and no one would lend money to anyone.

In his aesthetic theory, Kant holds that judgments that ascribe beauty to something, although they rest on feeling, do have a claim to validity and are not merely statements of taste or opinion. When a person judges something to be beautiful, imagination, perception, and understanding are in harmony; there is a harmony of the experienced object with mental structure. The concepts involved in such judgments are purpose and purposiveness.

Influence

Kant called his radical redefinition of philosophic problems and procedures a "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy. As Copernicus had reversed the way subsequent scientists thought about the relationship of the Earth and the Sun, so Kant reversed the way subsequent philosophers thought about the relationship of the world of experience and the mind. The mind is not shaped by the world of experience; rather the world of experience is shaped by the patterns set by the mind. Kant's influence and his stature as a philosopher can be measured by the fact that, since Kant, few have been able to philosophize without taking his work into account. His philosophy was the spring from which German IDEALISM flowed. The works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, G. W. F. Hegel, and Ernst Cassirer were greatly influenced by Kant's philosophy. Even those who have opposed Kant's views have tended to deal with philosophical questions as he framed them.

Donald Gotterbarn

Bibliography: Ameriks, Karl, Kant's Theory of the Mind (1982); Arendt, Hannah, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (1982); Beck, Lewis White, Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (1960; repr. 1984), Essays on Kant and Hume (1978), and Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965; repr. 1981); Broad, C. D., Kant: An Introduction, ed. by C. Lewy (1978); Cassirer, H. W., Kant's First Critique: An Appraisal of the Significance of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1954; repr. 1978) and Kant's Life and Thought (1981); Delaeuze, Gilles, Kant's Critical Philosophy, trans. by B. Habberjam and H. Tomlinson (1985); Ewing, Alfred C., Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 2d ed. (1967; repr. 1987); Findlay, Joan, Kant and the Transcendental Object (1981); Galston, William A., Kant and the Problem of History (1965); Goldman, Alan H., Moral Knowledge (1989); Goldman, Lucien, Immanuel Kant (1972); Guyer, Paul, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (1987); Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. by James S. Churchill (1962); Jaspers, Karl, Kant (1966); Kitcher, Patricia, Kant's Transcendental Psychology (1990); Korner, Stephan, Kant (1975); Schlipp, Paul A., Kant's Pre-Critical Ethics, 2d ed., ed. by Lewis W. Beck (1960; repr. 1977); Strawson, P. F., The Bounds of Sense (1966); Wilkerson, T. E., Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: A Commentary for Students (1976); Wolff, Robert P., ed., Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays (1968); Yovel, Y., Kant and the Philosophy of History (1989)"

Ethics in the Encyclopedia (Grolier)

"Ethics, or moral philosophy, the branch of philosophy concerned with conduct and character, is the systematic study of the principles and methods for distinguishing right from wrong and good from bad. Ethics has various interconnections with other branches of philosophy, such as metaphysics, the study of reality, and epistemology, the study of knowledge; this may be seen in such questions as whether there is any real difference between right and wrong and, if there is, whether it can be known.

Experiences that have led to ethical inquiry are uncertainty or conflicts of opinion about what ought to be done; the sometimes painful consequences of an action that earlier seemed perfectly acceptable; and awareness of differences in norms and practices among different societies. These experiences give rise not only to questions of practical ethics (What should I do? Is this arrangement fair?) but also to questions of theoretical ethics (Is any one of these standards really right or are they all just arbitrary?). Such experiences are also the main source of moral skepticism--along with the fact that moral judgments appear unverifiable by observation, because there seems to be nothing in experience corresponding to the rightness of an action. Thus these questions, among others, have been generated: What does it mean to say that something is right or good? What makes right actions right? How can disputes about moral questions be resolved? It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.

Philosophical ethics is often called normative ethics and distinguished from descriptive ethics. Descriptive ethics is a department of empirical science, akin to sociology, that aims to discover and describe what moral beliefs are held in a given culture (see MORAL AWARENESS). Normative ethics aims rather to prescribe; it searches for norms, not in the sense of what is average and in that sense normal, but in the sense of authoritative standards of what ought to be.

Metaethics

A distinction within ethics of importance in contemporary discussions is that between normative ethics and metaethics. Metaethics (literally "about ethics") is the analytical study of the discipline of ethics itself. The term came into use only in the 20th century and thus cannot be found in the works of any of the classical moral philosophers, although inquiries of the sort that constitute it certainly can. Metaethics attempts to determine the meanings of normative terms, such as right, good, ought, justice, and obligation, to determine their interconnections and whether any of these concepts is basic. It also attempts to analyze the nature of moral judgments and to determine both whether they can be justified and whether they can be true or false. A question of some prominence in recent discussions is whether an "ought" can be deduced from an "is" and just what the relation is between facts and values.

These are questions of both metaethics and traditional ethics, and the importance of the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics is itself controversial, some writers regarding it as essential, others as not. The question at issue is whether it is possible to analyze moral concepts and judgments without at the same time presupposing moral beliefs. If so then metaethics can be morally neutral, otherwise not.

Among the main approaches in metaethics are views called naturalism, cognitivism, intuitionism, and subjectivism. Naturalism (represented in different ways by Herbert SPENCER and John DEWEY) maintains that moral terms name complex matters of fact and that moral judgments can be established by scientific or factual investigation; non-naturalistic theories (such as that of G. E. MOORE) deny this. A cognitivist theory maintains that moral judgments can be true or false and can, in principle, be subjects of knowledge or cognition; noncognitivist theories deny this. These two categories overlap, and a cognitivist theory can be naturalistic or non-naturalistic.

Intuitionists such as H. A. Prichard and W. D. Ross claim that the sort of knowledge we have of right and wrong is immediate and self-evident. Reaction to intuitionism has led to subjectivism, emotivism, and imperativism. Subjectivists maintain that moral judgments state only subjective facts about attitudes and make no assertion about the object; thus if one says that something is wrong one is saying only that one disapproves of it or that society does. The emotive theory (A. J. AYER, C. L. Stevenson) claims that moral judgments do not state anything that is capable of being true or false, even subjectively, but merely express emotions; moral terms, according to this view, have only emotive meaning, like oaths or exclamations. Imperativism (Rudolf CARNAP) claims that moral judgments are commands in disguise (so that "You ought to do that" means simply "Do that!") and hence incapable of truth or falsity. Imperativism and emotivism are forms of noncognitivism. Subjectivism, however, is not, although it cannot usefully be classified as cognitivist either.

Any philosophical consideration of morality must come to terms with moral skepticism, and these different metaethical theories are different responses to skepticism. Any theory that maintains that moral principles cannot be proved, that there are no moral truths, that morality has no rational basis, or that the difference between right and wrong is merely a matter of taste or convention, is a form of moral skepticism. Subjectivism, imperativism, and emotivism are thus forms of skepticism. Cognitivist theories, on the other hand, are usually incompatible with it.

A widespread and familiar form of skepticism is ethical relativism, the view that there is no one correct moral code for all times and peoples, that each group has its own morality relative to its wants and values, and that all moral ideas are necessarily relative to a particular culture. According to this view, cannibals are justified in eating human beings by the standards of their own culture even if not by the standards of Western culture, and there can be no basis for claiming that the standards of Western culture are superior to theirs.

Relativism seems to be supported by the most cursory observations of the diversity among cultures and constitutes a problem both for metaethics and for normative ethics. For if there is no right or wrong that can be determined apart from the conventions of one's own culture, the question arises of what ought to be done when different cultures come into conflict. Among the cannibals should I do as the cannibals do or should I act according to the standards of my own culture? Even relativists and other moral skeptics tend to pursue an answer by a process of moral reasoning, which may appeal to one of the standards of normative ethics. Even if one as a theorist adopts an emotivist or other skeptical stance, one as a human being will confront problems of conduct that call for answers.

Normative Ethics

Among the questions of normative ethics are: What makes right actions right? How can we tell what is right? Why should I be moral? Major theories are usually classified as consequentialist (teleological) or nonconsequentialist (deontological). Consequentialism maintains that the morality of an action is determined solely by its consequences. Deontological theories claim, variously, that the morality of an action depends on its intrinsic nature, or on its motives, or on its being in accordance with some rule or principle, and either not at all or only partly on consequences.

Teleological theories vary in their determination of what consequences are relevant and in how the value of the consequences is to be determined, but all interpret moral judgments as dependent on values and evaluation, hence on value theory. One such value theory is HEDONISM, the view that only pleasure is good as an end, and teleological theories are commonly classified as hedonistic or nonhedonistic. UTILITARIANISM (Jeremy BENTHAM, John Stuart MILL), the theory that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the test of right and wrong, is hedonistic, since it interprets happiness as a balance of pleasure over pain. A nonhedonistic form of consequentialism is the "ideal utilitarianism" of G. E. Moore and Hastings Randall, which maintains that one ought to do that act of all those available in the circumstances that would produce the most good. Another rival to utilitarianism is self-realizationism, or perfectionism (ARISTOTLE, Thomas Hill GREEN), which holds that the ultimate end is the full development or perfection of the self. This is a form of teleological theory, but it is not hedonistic.

Some theories do not readily fall under the above classification. One such is the theological (or divine command) theory that it is the will of God that determines whether an action is right or wrong. On this view (Saint AUGUSTINE, William Paley) the morality of an act depends on neither its consequences nor its essential nature nor its motive, but solely on whether it is in accordance with the will of God. Such theological theories have had wide acceptance and correspond closely to what many religious though nonreflective people uncritically think is the truth about morality. Religion, however, does not necessarily commit one to the theological theory, which has received as much criticism by theists (Richard Whately) as by nontheists (Moore).

In the philosophy of Immanuel KANT, for one's action to be morally right one must be able to will one's maxim to be a universal law, that is, be willing to have everyone act in the same way (see also CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE). Kant imported another element into the discussion by introducing the concept of moral worth, insisting that one's action, even if right, has moral value only if one's motive for acting was to do what is right. Moral worth, then, depends on one's motive or intention, and not on what is actually done.

EGOISM (Thomas HOBBES), basing itself on the idea that everyone acts always out of self-interest, maintains that an action is right only if it is in the interest of the agent. This is consequentialist but not utilitarian; the utilitarian view of what is right in conduct is that it must be in the interest of everyone alike. Egoism, however, is not just another version of normative theory; it is a challenge to ethical theory itself. The challenge of egoism is that it raises the questions Why should I be moral? What's in it for me?, which rest on the idea that if there is no advantage in being moral, the agent can have no reason to be. Theological theories find it very easy to answer this question; others find it more difficult. The attempts to answer it have led to many inquiries into the basis of human motivation, the sanction for morality, the possibility of disinterested action, and the proper organization of society.

Situation ethics, which has come into prominence only recently, claims that the morality of an action depends on the situation and not on the application of a law to the case. This is a form of particular-case intuitionism and is opposed to utilitarianism and Kantianism as well as the divine-command theory. The original idea can be traced back to Aristotle, who held that the decision in a particular case "rests with perception," and the idea can be found in Ross (an intuitionist and non-naturalist) and Dewey (a naturalist and consequentialist).

Religious Ethics

One of the main problems of moral philosophy is the connection between morality and religion. Religious moralists tend to claim that there can be no morality without religion, because without God there can be no reason to be moral. Philosophers (with exceptions) tend to deny this, even take the opposite view. Philosophers as opposed as Mill and Kant held that religion rests on morality, since religion itself depends on the distinction between good and evil, an ethical concept.

Social Ethics

Some philosophers distinguish between personal ethics and social ethics. Personal ethics is taken as comprehending how one should act in relation to oneself, social ethics how one should act in relation to others. Such a distinction rests on differentiating between duties to oneself and duties to others, and one standard question of ethics is which of these is primary. Other thinkers (Dewey, for instance) regard the distinction as spurious, however, and regard all morality as essentially social, as comprehending problems that arise in a social setting.

In recent years some moral philosophers have returned to considering the questions of ethics in closer relation to those of political and legal philosophy. A paramount question is that of the justice of social institutions, especially (though not solely) the law. John RAWLS's A Theory of Justice (1971), which takes the basic structure of society as the primary subject of justice and attempts to derive laws for individual conduct from the principles for institutions, has sparked great debate. In the process new interest has developed on the nature of a just law, on whether one has a moral obligation to obey the law, and on whether law itself can be defined independently of morality. These are questions both in moral philosophy and in philosophy of law, as is the question of whether morality can be legislated, which is involved in disputes over racial integration and over legal restrictions on sexual relations and abortion.

Normative and Professional Ethics

In recent years, owing to rapid social change and unprecedented technological developments, there has been a great resurgence of interest in normative ethics. One aspect of this is the attention given by scientists, engineers, lawyers, physicians, journalists, and others to the ethical problems involved in the practice of their professions. Some of these occupational groups have formal codes of ethics, which set forth principles of conduct deemed appropriate to the special objects and responsibilities of each profession. The code of the medical profession, for instance, has characteristically prohibited advertising; that of the advertising profession never has. There has, at the same time, been great interest in the moral problems that arise in the course of the professional activity itself. These include problems about how scarce resources, such as dialysis machines or organ transplants, should be allocated, and on how open and honest physicians should be with their patients, especially those with a terminal illness. The very objectives of the medical profession (derived ultimately from the HIPPOCRATIC OATH)--to save life, to cure disease, and to alleviate suffering--are now seen to be in some cases conflicting. Devices are available that can prolong life at the cost of increasing suffering, and the problem of the morality of EUTHANASIA thus becomes more pronounced. Similar problems affect other professions.

New fields of ethics, such as bioethics, engineering ethics, and environmental ethics, dealing with issues not previously contemplated and with problems of concern to all, are now developing rapidly. Abortion and euthanasia are familiar examples of moral problems in medicine becoming moral problems for the wider society. Another area of serious debate concerns the propriety and limits of experimentation on both human subjects and animals (see ANIMAL RIGHTS). Thus current discussions exemplify the interplay between theory and practice, in this case in the area of ethics, that has always been most fruitful for both.

Marcus G. Singer

Bibliography: Amato, Joseph A., Guilt and Gratitude (1982); Billington, Ray, Living Philosophy: An Introduction to Applied Ethics (1988); Fischer, J.M., and Ravissa, M., Ethics (1991); Frankena, W. K., Ethics, 2d ed. (1973); Gert, Bernard, The Moral Rules (1973); Hancock, R. W., Twentieth Century Ethics (1974); MacIntyre, Alasdair, A Short History of Ethics (1966); Mappes, T. A., and Zembaty, J. S., eds., Social Ethics (1977); Melden, A. I., ed., Ethical Theories, 2d ed. (1967); Moore, G. E., Ethics (1912; repr. 1967); Sellars, Wilfrid, and Hospers, John, eds., Readings in Ethical Theory, 2d ed. (1970); Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics (1961; repr. 1986); Singer, M. G., Generalization in Ethics (1961; repr. 1971); Singer, Peter, Applied Ethics (1986); Stevenson, C. L., Ethics and Language (1944; repr. 1975); Sumner, L. W., The Moral Foundation of Rights (1987); Taylor, P. W., Principles of Ethics (1975); Theroux, Jacques P., Ethics: Theory and Practice, 3d ed. (1986); Wellman, Carl, Morals and Ethics, 2d ed. (1988)."

Professional Ethics: Hippocratic oath

"{hip-uh-krat'-ik}

The Hippocratic oath is the most enduring tradition in Western medicine and has been the guiding ethical code for physicians since ancient Greece. A continuing ideal and a strong moral force conditioning medical practice, the oath falls into two parts. The first specifies the duties of the physician to his teachers and his obligations in transmitting medical knowledge. The second, giving rules to be observed in the treatment of diseases, is a short summary of medical ethics expressing general principles (see ETHICS, MEDICAL).

The oath is named for the famous Greek physician HIPPOCRATES, but its authorship is uncertain. The content suggests that it was formulated during the 4th century BC according to the doctrines of the Pythagorean philosophy. Representing a small segment of Greek opinion, the oath was not universally accepted by ancient physicians. At the end of ancient times, however, medical practice began to conform to conditions envisaged by the document. The oath eventually became the nucleus of all medical ethics, and although it has been modified during the 20th century, the ethical strength remains. In its most compelling portions, it emphasizes the profundity of the medical covenant, patient dignity, the confidentiality of the transaction, and the physician's responsibility to guard against abuse or corruption of his knowledge and art.

In 1948 in Geneva a modern version of the oath was drawn up by the World Medical Association. As amended in 1968, its text appears below.

Charles W. Bodemer

The Declaration of Geneva

At the time of being admitted a member of the medical profession:

I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity;

I will give my teachers the respect and gratitude which is their due;

I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity;

The health of my patient will be my first consideration;

I will respect the secrets which are confided in me, even after the patient has died;

I will maintain by all the means in my power, the honor and the noble traditions of the medical profession;

My colleagues will be my brothers;

I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient;

I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception; even under threat I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.

I make these promises solemnly, freely and upon my honour."